


Hunting on the Moon

by Moiststar



Series: Hungarian Hazing [2]
Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Best Friends, Drug Use, M/M, Sleepovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:46:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29169039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moiststar/pseuds/Moiststar
Summary: I hideamong springs sometimesand sometimes I descend the slopeof depths I cannot seeAh love一a springfalling aslant from the heights of fatigueAdonis…Could you get me another drink now?I think we have chemistry. I really need a lab partner.Could I just, you know, let my molecules separatewhile you keep an eye on the burner? The flame’s kind of fickle.Here’s hoping it doesn’t go out."Party" Kim Addonizio
Relationships: Greg Hirsch & Tom Wambsgans, Greg Hirsch/Tom Wambsgans
Series: Hungarian Hazing [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2123202
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Hunting on the Moon

The vodka splashed over the glass’ rim to wet Greg’s smart indigo wool and cotton blend pullover. The pattern created was like a less angular Rothko, ultramarine on indigo. Or perhaps a late Mattise? A close up of a midnight lily pond by Monet. His ruminations made his head tilt, eyes slightly squinted, mouth ajar in a mirror to Greg’s, hung slightly open in utter confusion. At that moment he realized he really knew nothing about art.

The alcohol, the drugs, the come down from the panic attack during the swimming pool stunt pushed Tom well past the point where he was truly slowly losing his mind. In singular essence, this meant being unaware of how honest he had become.

“Watch it, I actually, like, spent a couple hundred on this.”

Tom laughed hysterically. 

“You mean you didn’t get that from the clearance rack at the Gap? Let me clean it off for you.” He sloppily rubbed the wet spot, around the middle of his chest, with the hand free of the shaking vodka glass. “All better, right? This is just a lesson, Greg. In how to be rich. Except you’ve failed. You’d have threatened to make me pay for it if you really wanted to pass with flying colors. Well, live and learn, huh?”

“Yeah… Um is there another glass? I’ll just pour my own.”

“What, do you think I’m diseased? Am I a dirty leper to you now Greg?”

He looked away in the sheepish way he had perfected. It pricked Tom to realize all at once he found him attractive, even beautiful. The half smile with its lush cupid’s bow, knowing he’s being made fun of, but too shy or weak or coquettish to come up with an adequate comeback. Avoiding confrontation in the most roundabout, self effacing awkward way, yet still somehow perversely charming.

“Yeah, in the bathroom. Hurry or I’ll finish the rest. This bottle was like half empty to start with."

After a pause, he started again.

"You were right, you know. About Shiv. And that liberal fuck.”

Greg was still in the bathroom and mumbled something. 

He kept talking as he got into bed, making sure his voice carried to reach Greg in the bathroom. Throwing off the large collection of useless throw pillows onto the floor, he crawled into the depths of the cave made of piles of the softest fabric. Even the mattress itself was too soft. 

“Have you ever been in love? To be really honest with you Greg, I couldn’t even imagine you having sex until recently. You looked like a newborn calf wobbling around the place for the first few months. But I’d say a man who knows how to blackmail, knows how to fuck, you know what I mean? I bet her name was something like, Nicky. Am I close? Or more exotic, Giselle? More artsy, you were just ready to pounce on Willa... What about Poppy?”

He was so obviously devoid of filter, Greg let him carry on after perching on the bed and sipping at the vodka, which tasted smoother than even Absolut. There was something about it that made the expected fire turn into a slow, carnal burn. 

“I have to say, that haus frau really knows her vodka, or, wait that’s German, can I say that? Is that offensive? Well please don’t report me to Logan, he may just piss on me right in the boardroom. Don’t you dare even fucking think of breathing a word of this, Greg. Or I swear to God, I swear on your mother, I swear on my mother, and I swear on your crusty Grandpa Ewan, I will break your fucking neck.”

“Dude, what the fuck, I would never tell anyone. We’ve been over this. I know you told me never to trust anyone but let’s just break the rules this time. Or a couple. I don’t know. I like being around you, you’re different than the other guys when you’re… not around the other guys.”

“What about Kendall? I thought you were courting him? Or was it the other way around?”

“I-it’s not like that.”

Yet again a blush crept over his cheeks. Possibly the vodka. Possibly the embarrassment of the thought of Kendall being into him. Possibly… the possibilities were what bit at Tom deep down, goading his possessiveness that he himself didn’t even understand when it came to Greg.

“So Poppy then?”

“What?”

“Your first love. I bet her name was Alexis. I’d bet money on that. Say $2000? If I’m wrong you can buy a new lamb’s wool sweater or whatever the fuck you’re wearing.”

“Dude, it’s… I don’t really want to talk about that.” 

He had been tracing letters on the duvet, careful to avoid the small mountain of Tom’s knees. He almost resembled a front facing odalisque, head held in one palm and awaiting company on fresh linens. 

“Then get in bed. I’m freezing, and now you owe me one. We just agreed friends don’t keep secrets, and I’ve been traumatized. I can’t go to sleep alone, it’s actually a condition, it’s called my dick is so tumescent and primal I’ve never been able to keep girls out of my bed.”

“Okay, that’s… None of that just happened? And I’m not a girl? I don’t even know what tumescent means.”

Offended that his invitation was declined, he replaced the duvet and went silent. 

“Um, I can sleep on top of the covers… or? It’s… I don’t know.”

“No it was a fucking weird question, I’m sorry I asked. This place, it’s eerie, it’s fucking spooky and I… want to sleep already. You can go.”

He frowned deeply, visibly in pain at having to beg for company, for any fraction of physical intimacy.

“The pills… They’re, I’m, they’ll make it like it was a dream. I’ll forget completely when I wake up and even when the memories come back it’ll be like it wasn’t me… You were right. About Shiv cheating. I want to make sure you know that. I don’t know if that requires a thank you or an apology for beating you up… Anyways, uh, I want you, I’d like it, I’d like for you to stay just until I fall asleep. It shouldn’t take long. I can barely keep my eyes open. Words just keep coming out of my mouth, don’t they. Once I shut up it won’t take long.”

For Tom the ticks of the ridiculously baroque clock on the mantelpiece across the room seemed ancient and judicial. Everything would be decided with Greg’s answer, anxiety couldn’t touch him, but he wanted this so keenly he could still fight off his body and brain shutting down into sleep.

“Yeah… They stuck me in a room half the size of this one anyways. It’s like summer camp, real… morale building fun. Maybe next year we’ll build our own tents… or something.”

He slipped in under the covers, while Tom courteously turned over to face the wall, the first time he had been a little spoon possibly in his entire life apart from Shiv. Without any way to keep his physical self composure, he let himself lean against Greg. Being drunk, high in this way allowed him to nearly melt into him, savour his body heat, erase all resistance to intimacy. Even Greg’s rhythmic, slightly fast, respiration on his hair created molten strings drawing them into each other.

He could understand now, in retrospect, his pathological need to be close to Greg. The way he smelled, it was unlike anything. There was always a pit in a part of his heart that refused to stay cold against how irrational his attraction to him was. All this time it had been sprouting, growing upwards to bloom in his conscious mind. 

“Shiv is sometimes the big spoon.” His voice came out slow and stupid.

Greg’s snort of amusement tickled his scalp.

“She really wears the pants doesn’t she.”

“Shut up, I bet you like being tied up and pegged or some submissive shit.”

He could feel the tiny truth in the uptick of Greg’s heartbeat pressing against his shoulder blade, just as his own beat a bit faster to tell the truth as an insult.

“Well, no, I mean not… Not necessarily. I actually uh… haven’t had too much experience. In intercourse. The sexual kind.”

“No! Greg! You’re actually a virgin?”

“No, I mean, I’ve had sex but it wasn’t necessarily. You know. Great. I grew up learning about sex from the internet and… I mean a little from my dad but. Like that was when I was younger. The first time I came I thought it was some like, weird form of pus or something and I showed my mom and we uh, we avoided each other for awhile. She printed up some sex ed stuff and… yeah. That was it.”

Tom stifled his snorts behind his hand, but soon his cheeks were wet with tears of laughter.

“Yeah okay, if you tell anyone I’ll choke you out or like break your neck too whatever.”

“I didn’t say I’d choke you out, Greg, you really are a little masochist aren’t you. Wait, I mean sadist.”

His voice was becoming so slurred, Greg leaned even closer to make out his words, and almost nuzzled against his neck.

“Right, I thought you were so tired you could barely stay awake."

Both of Greg’s arms were awkwardly pressed against Tom’s back, in an attempt to avoid the appearance of actually spooning. Though bearing no actual resemblance to any sleepover the two had ever had, it strangely began to feel like one. The stifled near hysterical laughter, the inability to stop talking shit, the midnight hours, the silence of a house filled with sleeping bodies who perhaps were actually sharing secrets of their own. 

Through the window, on the cold exterior wall the bed was cruelly placed next to, the stars were visible. Neither knew the other was mesmerized by how many there were, as many or even more than the rural lands of their upbringings. Perseus and Andromeda, Cassiopea, Pegasus. Excluding the icy shining of the stars and an owl’s occasional hoots, a looming quiet lay over the estate. Enclosed in mounds of soft blankets and pillows, warm and safe, it was as if they were pampered adolescent aristocrats who had always lived at the manor.

“Put your arm over me.”

“Huh?” 

“You don’t have to lay there like a vestal virgin, put your arm over me. You’ve probably cut the blood flow off.”

Almost asleep himself, Greg complied and let Tom move his other arm under his neck. He took Greg’s hand in his, holding it for a while until he could feel it relax. It’s like this. The beginning. Testing to see if it’s okay. If he wants what you want, if the world thinks what you want is okay. 

His mind drifted, half in dream, half asleep, placing images of deer, owls, nonsensical conversations he wasn’t sure he was actually having or not. Throughout this he traced the skin of Greg’s hand, investigating the architecture of its structure, the skin soft throughout except the callus on his middle finger. He brought the hand up to his lips, absentmindedly dragging the knuckles slowly over his lower lip, so each was wet by the force which lightly dragged his lip down. Slowly, so slowly it might have been a light touch rather than a kiss, he brought the center of the back Greg’s hand to his lips and pressed down ever so softly. 

He could only tell the other’s response through changes in respiration, holding of breath, the palpable struggle not to exhale too heavily, the failure to control his heart rate. Tom only noticed in the back of his mind how Greg exerted almost as much effort not to get hard, partially failing in that too. In this endeavor, Greg could tell how barely conscious Tom was and to do anything, not that he was thinking of his boss that way, not that this was something he would ever think of again, not that he was caught between being genuinely worried for Tom and more confused than he had ever been about another man in his life, would be beyond wrong. When Tom finally fell asleep, Greg’s hand fell back onto the bed.

In the morning, Tom woke up alone to the sun in his face. The memories of the night didn’t really return until breakfast. Cyd’s dry jibe about sausages conjured up whatever foggy memories could be recovered, but he remained as calm as one could after the events of the previous night. Greg joined him at his table before long. 

“Thank you.”

Candlelight, chanting, knees aching on the centuries old wooden floor, pungent smell of boar meat, sticky fingers, walking outside into the unknown dark cold, swimming pool ten feet deep, skip, close your eyes, shower, Greg, pills, alcohol, moon over the stars, warmth. 

He didn’t know what the thank you was for until after he laid his hand reassuringly on Greg’s arm. 

Thank you for lying for me.

Thank you for trusting me. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted this to be soft considering next season becoming... Friends to Enemies... (To Lovers).


End file.
